Fiery Mountain instinctively took a step back. She was strong for her level, but she couldn't go past it with her power. Actually, the sole idea that someone could overcome the gaps among the stages of the ninth rank seemed unreal except in specific events.
Instead, Noah and June felt entirely at ease. The two had already proven to themselves that their power alone was more than enough to overwhelm those three opponents, so they could focus on other details.
The three experts were clearly cultivators, or, at least, they had been that before transforming into that mess of branches and leaves. Noah could sense that their bodies and worlds still existed behind the corruption applied by the plants growing from them, but everything felt muddled and hidden.